From the Dark

By Andy Huang

A former bomber pilot finds a cerebral implant with a mystery inside. A Navy lieutenant hears a cybernetic call from an assassinated president. An Undersecretary of Defense stumbles upon a plot that leads them to the heart of the Federation - and the darkness within.

In a space-faring future, the Whisper, a cybernetic spacecraft piloting technology, is being pushed for widespread military adoption. Its past, however, is shrouded in governmental cover-up, and comes with secrets all its own.

Drawn into a conspiracy, Gerrard, Inca, and Strontium must unravel the threads, face an oncoming war, and find from the darkness a form of humanity - one they can still believe in.

Packed with space battles, pirates, and political/spy intrigue, From the Dark is "gripping and intense," "a wild trip of a book," and "dark, telling and oh, so compelling."

Embark on the space adventure of a lifetime now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andy Huang
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463727225

Andy Huang

Andy Huang is a Singaporean-born independent sci-fi author. He loves to read widely, from modernist authors like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce to sci-fi and fantasy greats such as William Gibson and Raymond E. Feist.

Book preview

From the Dark

By Andy Huang

Distributed by Smashwords

Other titles in the Nightfall series

Within the Light

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Copyright 2017 Andy Huang

Special thanks

Sharon Umbaugh, The Writer’s Reader; Merran Eby; Persephone Grey; Tiffany Dawn Munn, Owl Editing

Cover design

Fwhitehouse7732 @ 99designs.com

Contact

For information, address the author at: www.andyhuangsf.com.

1

The memory came from the dark.

Soaring through the red skies, wingtip to wingtip. The whir of the bomb hatches as they opened, their payloads whistling as they fell.

They were flush with excitement, the thrill of their first mission. They were young and they didn't know.

The people on whom the bombs fell were just like them. Labeled insurrectionists and rebels by the Federation. But people caught in the swirl just like them, unknowing and unknown…

Gerrard opened his eyes.

Naut's red sun shone, oblivious, dripping a blood red into the interior of the flight deck.

Tang's Fiddler drifted ahead, the spacecraft's manufacturer’s mark a coffee-colored slash across its dark underbelly. The Fiddler, a matching one to his own, flashed the lights bearing the optical communications between them. Tang's voice played over the comms, jazz in the background.

You alright?

Gerrard sat forward in the chair, looking into the displays. His reflection stared back: gaunt, ghostly, and tired.

Just fine, he said.

Just fine.

But as he landed at the bottom of the cockpit ladder, Gerrard wondered: what if. If he closed his eyes now his father wouldn't have written to him from the abyss. He wouldn't be out here in space looking for whatever it was he was supposed to find. And what he had found wouldn't be waiting for him in the hold.

But the lights punched on in the hold and there the box was. He circled the small, gunmetal-gray container, coming to a stop at its front. The seal of the Federation Navy, silver stars on a black field, gazed at him from its lid. Gerrard folded his arms and had to wonder. What did one do with the first physical evidence he had in four years of his father's existence?

After a moment of thought, he tried for a chuckle, as bitter as he could get it. But before long it turned into the laughter of a madman, resounding in the hold. For here was the past, locked away in a box, its lid bearing the seal of the Federation Navy, the image from his nightmares.

What was one to do, indeed?

You're going to do what now?

Jettison it. Back in the flight deck, Gerrard leaned back against the seat. He heard the silence, the question Tang wouldn't ask: why?

Instead, what Tang said was: Okay, buddy. Alright. Tell you what. I'll head back first, and catch you again planetside. You take your time out here.

And just like that, Gerrard would be alone. The white-blue electric flash of Tang's warp drive filled the display, then darkness and nothing. Gerrard stared into the space left behind, finding the answer to Tang's unspoken question there.

Because he had long promised to forget.

But the memories came back from the dark.

His father, old and gray, leaning against the weather-beaten doorframe of their farmhouse. The man's eyes, shaded over, an unfathomable blur in Gerrard’s memories. What had his father been thinking? Could they have avoided what happened?

Gerrard never knew, driving away, promising himself not to look back.

All that was left now was to try and forget.

He pushed for the Whisper connector. He would take one last gander around the spot, salute the memory of his father, then jettison the box. He would walk away from it all.

Gerrard leaned back into the seat, and the finger-length Whisper spike slid into the cerebral slot at the back of his head. It scraped against the metal rim of the slot and he winced at the sensation, then again as the lock at the base of the spike caught.

With that done, it was time to go.

He closed his eyes and let the darkness of the Whisper bloom in his mind.

When he looked again it was through the eyes of the Fiddler. Naut's sun was a dull crimson in the Night, that vast space and nothingness that surrounded all that humanity was. The Ambassador shuttle he and Tang had found drifted ahead, an unnatural sight in the middle of light years' worth of nowhere. Gerrard clenched his hand, and the claw at the end of the Fiddler's sixty-foot, jointed arm snapped shut.

In the Whisper, the pilot and the spacecraft were one.

That had been the draw for them, soaring through black space and red sky. The exhilaration and the rush. Of course they hadn't thought about what they were doing. He remembered it all again now, the curve of the landscape and the sound of the bombs.

In the darkness, there was no way to forget.

Gerrard.

The voice spoke from out of the Whisper, distinct among the memories.

Then he was falling, unknowing and unknown.

Gerrard opened his eyes. The underside of the bunk bed above him read ‘NIGHTTIME FURNISHINGS.’ He didn't know where he was. He looked around and saw a small, dim cabin, and that someone else was there. Struggling to sit up, he found himself held back down by restraints across his chest and limbs. The man there, dressed in a light-blue flight suit, with something of a military manner about him, came alive as he grunted in surprise.

You're awake, the man said. Listen, I'll take the restraints off in just a second, but you must promise not to remove the implant in your cerebral slot no matter what.

What the hell?

Gerrard lay back down. Implants—cerebral implants—were finger-length, cylindrical devices that fit into the cerebral slots at the back of his head the same way the Whisper spike connector did. But if they didn’t have obvious effects, he wouldn't even have known he had one in one of his slots without running a finger over the aperture.

And he hadn't had one there since his Navy days. What the hell was going on?

The last he remembered, he was on board his own ship, plugging into the Whisper. The memory came to him in a blur now. He’d heard some sort of voice from within the system. Then what had happened? He wasn’t on the Fiddler now—he was sure of that. How had he ended up somewhere else, and tied down too?

Listen, the man said again. "My name is the Jackal. You're on board the Harrier. We're two jumps away from Naut, where I found you. There's a lot more to explain. But once again, you must not remove the implant in your slot."

Gerrard struggled to think. He found his throat parched. Why? he said.

Because if it's an implant of the sort I suspect it is, it'll carry a clasp on your nervous system. Remove the implant without the right authorization code, and the implant will kill its host—that's you. Do you understand now, and can you promise not to remove it while we talk?

In the dim light, Gerrard saw now a shock of short, blond hair over intense blue eyes. No hint of mirth or humor showed in the Jackal's features as he waited for a reply. Gerrard ran over every possibility of what had happened between the Fiddler and here. None of it made sense.

His stomach growled and a dull pain bothered the back of his head.

Just get me some water. And food, he said.

The Jackal paused one moment longer, then reached over and undid the restraints.

Gerrard wolfed down the bread and water. When he finished eating, he pushed the tray away and closed his eyes. Repeat everything you’ve said, he said.

Alright, the Jackal said. I am an agent from the Initiative.

The Initiative. The nation bordering the Federation. The two had a long history.

The Jackal continued. "I was sent to the coordinates in space where I found you. I was to pick up a critical piece of intelligence my government believes the Federation has on my country. I did not expect the intelligence to take the form of a cerebral implant, and I certainly did not expect that implant to be in anybody."

And you say the implant cannot be removed without, what was it, an authorization code?

That is correct.

Gerrard ran his hands over his face, struggling to remember.

He was in the hold of his Fiddler, and had left the box there. He wanted to jettison it, and had jacked into the Whisper to do so. Then the voice had spoken, and then…what? He couldn’t remember. But the light in the cabin, bright in his eyes now, somehow reminded him of something.

Slowly, it came back to him.

The voice had said his name. Had it been his father’s voice? No. He would have recognized it, even after so long.

But there’d been some kind of message. The words slipped out of the edges of his memory, and it hurt to try to remember. He wanted to reach back to run his fingers over the implant again, but stopped himself short. The Jackal had all but jumped the first few times he tried.

It’s alright. It’s alright, the Jackal said. I see you don’t remember exactly what happened. That’s fine for now. Can you tell me how you came to be where you were?

Gerrard looked at the man, remembering again.

It was five months ago when the messages had started coming. He and Tang had thought they were a hoax for sure. Then the messages started using the codewords and phrases only he and his father shared, a secret they had promised from his childhood to only be between them. No one else was supposed to know them, and yet there they were. One of the phrases was: What you’re seeking will be out there.

He and Tang had gone out to the locations the messages specified. Most times there was nothing. Not even a piece of scrap or debris. They had searched but there was nothing and nowhere in space to hide anything. He had wanted to give up. He was unsure even what they were supposed to find.

Then, two to three months in, they started finding various spacecraft where the messages said. Never anything big, small shuttles, personnel carriers. The Ambassador was the largest they found. And when they took apart its cabin, there the box was.

He came back to the moment to find the Jackal studying him. Gerrard shifted under the gaze. So you say you found me comatose in my seat? he said.

Yes.

So the Jackal had boarded the Fiddler.

And the box was already open? Gerrard said.

That is right.

And what was inside it again?

Well, like I said, there was a very specific setup. There was a sort of radio wave transmitter, with a niche that held something the size of a cerebral implant. The niche was empty, but the transmitter was ordinary otherwise. We left it behind.

Gerrard didn’t know what any of it meant. And where is my ship now? he said.

I'm sorry. We had to destroy it. We had to leave as little evidence behind as we could.

Gerrard sank his head into his hands and took a deep breath. He and Tang had saved up almost a year for the Fiddler. Fine, he said, looking up after a while. You want to know, I'll tell you. I don't know anything. I run a salvaging company with my buddy. We got a tip through one of our regular channels. We went out there like anyone would. Now my ship is gone.

The Jackal nodded, his face impassive. I'm sorry.

Gerrard rubbed at his eyes. So what the hell do we do now?

Right. I need you to know that the implant is dangerous. And by that I mean there are elements out there looking for it, people who would not be concerned about erasing the information on it by killing you.

Gerrard had no reason to believe any of it. Or even that the Jackal was who he said he was.

But as far as he knew, his father had sent him a box from the grave.

And one with the seal of the Federation Navy on it.

If only he could remember.

Fine, he said. Say I believe what you’re saying. And there are nut jobs out there who want to find the implant and kill me. Then what?

The Jackal’s brows remained knit. "Well yes. The thing is, the only people I trust to help you with the problem are back in the Initiative. We have people who have dealt with implants like this one before, who will be able to remove it without killing you. But to do that I’m going to have to invite you to join us on our trip, and, as you say in the Federation, haul ass back to the Initiative with us."

2

Inca paused at the edge of the Night.

A suitable amount of time had passed, and the radar and sensors remained blank. No one else was in the space around her, and she would have time to herself. She cranked down the filtration on the Interceptor's sensory input, then allowed herself to relax. This was what she had come for.

Looking out through the eyes of her spacecraft, Inca saw the colors of the Night. The blank darkness of the seeming nothingness of space gave way to pools of hues, weaved through with lines and patterns, spots of cool and warmth, and waves of light and dark. This was the Whisper she had come to know, and she was the best there was at it. Cocooned within the darkness and safety of the connection, Inca let herself be pulled along the waves.

Next, she worked to clear the surface frustrations of her mind. Yes, they had stuck her in mindless patrol duty for the last year or so. Yes, they had done that knowing where she had come from. They had promoted her earlier than usual, but it had not been enough.

Lieutenant Inca, officer of the Federation Navy. She knew she was an outsider to many on Werth Base. They thought her aloof and unfeeling. The rumors of her ability had spread far and wide. She had respect in place of friendship.

The spacecraft gained momentum, and, before long, moved without conscious thought from her. Inca relished the sensation. This was the Whisper as it was meant to be.

This was her dance, and the Whisper was her partner. It knew her next move and anticipated her wishes. Time lost its cadence, and she let herself follow the rhythms of the spacecraft’s motions. The Interceptor weaved its way forward and she exulted in it. The sleek, small fighter was the shape she needed it to be, her physical presence against the vast nothingness of space. After a period, she relinquished the ship’s thrust, and let herself drift in the void. A good tiredness crept over her, and she opened herself to it. The small changes and pressures in the streams of information coming into the spacecraft pushed inward against her. Space became a blanket, softening itself over her. She relaxed into the darkness of the Whisper.

Then she heard the cry.

It was a radio wave transmission the Interceptor had received from space, translated and fed into her mind by the Whisper. That much she was aware of before the cry gripped her. It was profound and intense, a call from a human heart. It reached out to her and warned of its sorrow. Inca burst out of the Whisper connection, shaking in her seat.

The nightmares crowded in around her.

This was not the first time she had heard a cry like that.

She had been a research subject then.

Inca pushed the thoughts away. What was important now was to find the source of the transmission. The radar showed nothing in the immediate vicinity: the source was too far. She would have to skip in the direction of the transmission till she found its origin. She aligned the Interceptor and revved its warp engine. Starlight flowed toward the ship, then the Interceptor was off.

The stars fell back to their normal perspective as the Interceptor landed out of warp yet again. The engine died down, and Inca sent out a burst of radar. This time, the radar map lit up. Inca checked through the information to make sure she was seeing it right: a single Fiddler-class salvaging ship in a field of debris, surrounded by six other spacecraft, five of which the Interceptor recognized as disused Federation fighter classes—the kind copied and built by pirate elements. The last was a larger-sized Shrike-class corvette, hovering near the Fiddler. Whatever was happening here wasn’t good. She aligned the Interceptor toward the ships and began a slow approach.

Surfacing enough from the Whisper to speak, she sent over the radio: Unidentified spacecraft, this is the Federation Navy. You are trespassing in restricted space. Report your pilot IDs and originating ports.

The five fighter spacecraft angled themselves towards her. The warning flashed in the Whisper: a shot had been fired. Time within the Whisper slowed to a series of consecutive frames, and Inca reacted.

She detonated a burst charge attached to the top of the Interceptor. Pushed downward, the ship swept clear of the incoming shot. Inca angled the Interceptor further downward and put full thrust into its main axis, drawing on the momentum of the initial burst. She had lost the initiative, and would have to take it back. All five of the fighters had started shooting.

The Interceptor went into full activity, mapping the positions and trajectories of all the enemy spacecraft. She understood what she had to do: her consciousness of the Interceptor’s form, trajectory, and thrust capabilities allowed her to intuit the path she had to take. All she had to do now was let go, and let mind and spaceship become one.

Time unfroze, and the Interceptor shot through the lattice of incoming fire. But there was more than just surviving the dance. A singular node stood out within the matrix of information flooding in: she had come into the right position and orientation to fire upon one of the attackers. She let her weapon strike.

Laser reached out from the front turret of the Interceptor, touching a specific point in the darkness, pushing the power of a small nuclear reaction across space, connecting attacker and target with an invisible beam. She held the contact for as long as the orientation of her turret allowed. Then the Interceptor had to turn away for its next evasive maneuver. Right about now, a bloom of superheated heatsink cells would be ejected from the bottom right of the Interceptor, marking the ship’s location. She set off two more burst charges on the bottom of the ship, rocketing the Interceptor away from the bloom.

But as she did, a shot grazed its side, spinning the ship out of control.

An alarm went off in the darkness of the Whisper. The projectile had torn a deep groove in the armor. In her panic, Inca almost tore herself out of the connection. But that was where pilots died, removing themselves from their control systems when their spacecraft most needed them. Fighting down the urge to disconnect, Inca blanked her mind and pushed herself further into the embrace of the Whisper. The flood of information from the ship slammed back into her.

In the darkness and the terror, she was most alive.

Inca knew her role. Relying more on instinct than attempting to process the information, she let the spacecraft use her mind as needed. Nodes of information flashed and disappeared, connections forming and breaking within an instant. The Interceptor took advantage of its spinning motion, adding thrust to draw out a large spiral, then adjusting its axis to lengthen it into a corkscrew. Within the motion, the dance of the spacecraft came back to her.

Her spatial sense kicked in, working in tandem with the Interceptor’s gyroscopic information. Together with the ship’s tracking capabilities, she had a near-perfect sense of the enemies’ locations. The Interceptor dodged, activating another burst charge. A projectile swept past, skimming the edge of the ship. In the same breath, the Interceptor flipped around and faced its attacker. Its main laser had recharged and Inca let it strike. If the Interceptor’s aim was true, she would have only three of the five attackers left to deal with.

But she was flagging. She had allowed the Whisper to take full control of her mind, and it had placed an enormous burden upon her. She knew her physical body was facing tremendous strain too, from the gyrations of the spacecraft. A small part of her attention slipped away from the fight, noticing that the larger corvette she had seen was now attaching itself to the Fiddler. Some part of her screamed that this was important. But then a second shot rammed straight and true into the Interceptor.

The Interceptor spun again from the impact. A portion of the electronics was damaged. She and the ship lost their bearings, and a third shot hit. The Interceptor detected a fourth shot coming in, and recommended an eject. Inca took it while she still could.

The Whisper, all its streams of information, and her visuals through the ship’s cameras tore away as she ejected from her seat. Catapulted back into her body, her mind slammed into the physical stresses and pains it had been enduring. She screamed into her helmet as her body launched out the ship. The red sun was brighter than it should be. She was in a spin, spiraling into the darkness, the Interceptor receding and fading away.

..............................

Tang’s first instinct had been to give Gerrard some time and space. His buddy had things to work through, and Tang understood when it was easier done without him around. A few more jumps would take him to the next stargate, and from there he would make his way home to Eri.

He thought back to all that had happened leading up to now. It hadn’t been easy getting to this point. Gerrard had been a wreck when he had left the Navy, and they’d been drifting apart for a while anyway. A chance meeting had reunited Tang with his childhood friend, and had given him a chance to see just how much help Gerrard needed.

And so he convinced Gerrard to start the salvaging company, the two of them scraping the money together to pay off the two Fiddlers—and they hadn’t even finished doing that yet. But it had been worth it to see Gerrard recover a little of himself, to see that shy, intense boy who had been his best friend back when they still played with toy spaceships on Gerrard’s family farm.

The messages from Gerrard’s father had just about knocked him back to his worst days. Tang sighed. Had he done the right thing, encouraging Gerrard to pursue the messages, to seek out the locations they specified? That they had found something within the Ambassador shuttle this time surprised even Tang himself.

He wondered if he had made a mistake leaving Gerrard alone with the box. Or just leaving Gerrard alone at all. The warp drive came online, ready for the jump to the next stargate, and Tang stared at its green indicator light on his console.

No, he had made a mistake. He had brought Gerrard all the way here, and should be there to see it through to the end with him. Who knew what the box contained, and how Gerrard would react to any of it? Gerrard’s relationship with his father had always been a dark storm that Tang could only see from afar. However uncomfortable it might have been, he shouldn’t have left his friend in the middle of that. Tang readied to turn the ship around. He should be there with Gerrard now.

The Fiddler landed out of warp and Tang could tell something was wrong. The first burst of radar he sent out showed drifting bits and pieces of material, not Gerrard’s Fiddler like he expected. Tang worked the ship’s console, fixing his camera on the nearest of the pieces. A cold fear gripped at his stomach.

That was Gerrard's ship out there, blown into pieces.

Tang stared, unable to process what he was seeing. Then reality wound its way back with a twisting, gut-wrenching hold on his soul. Gerrard's ship was in pieces. And his best friend was…

He stopped the thought there before it went on.

His best friend had to still be alive.

A strange sort of unthinking calm came over him. He set the Fiddler's analytics on the wreckage in front of it. The readout came back: there wasn't a human body within the wreckage. Hope, infinitesimal as it was, flared. If Gerrard wasn't here, he was somewhere else, alive. That had to be it. But he had to be sure. He had to see for himself.

Stumbling as he went, he slid down the cockpit ladder and headed towards the airlock. Once there, he shut the interior door and began the chamber depressurization. The air sucked away and he took a step toward the exterior hatch. Outside, the dark of the Night awaited him.

Then the hatch opened from outside.

Tang fell backward as a human form swam into the circle of the open hatch. It wasn’t Gerrard—he could tell from a glance that the suit was wrong. Whoever it was uprighted themselves and he saw now that the suit bore a Federation Navy patch, a lieutenant rank on its front, and the word ‘INCA’ sewn in yellow stitch below that.

Tang stared, unsure what to even think.

The woman reached into a pocket in the front of her suit, pulling out a pencil and pad. After some frantic scribbling, she held up a message for him, bold, clear, and backed up by her glare: I NEED YOUR SHIP, NOW.

3

Strontium tapped a pen on the papers on the desk as the news told of the chaos.

"…the tension has reached a boiling point nearly a week after the president’s assassination, as politicians and the media clamor for information from the capital world. This following months of heightened tensions that have seen troop increases along the Federation-Initiative border worlds.

The official investigation, which began immediately after the assassination, has been working around the clock to come up with answers for a nation shocked…

He turned the news off and savored the silence. Gray rain drummed against the solitary window in the whitewashed office, a soothing backdrop to the thinking that had to be done.

And there was a lot of thinking to be done.

But first, he needed information. And not the kind that would come from the news.

Stepping out of the office, he walked with a brisk step toward the parking on the top level.

Work-life balance, people, he told them as he passed them.

Goodnight, Mr. Undersecretary, they told him.

Reaching the roundabout mechanism in the parking level, Strontium waited for his car to come round, then slumped into its cool darkness with relief. The mechanism locked into place, then the car revved up and shot